An Old Man's Game

by Andy Weinberger

  But the plain fact is, almost anyone can be a detective. There’s nothing magical. You want to know what I do? What I really do? Mostly I just wait. I keep my eyes open. I go around, I ask lots of questions—many of them to no avail—and I wait for answers to fall out of the sky. And you don’t have to be Albert Einstein to solve a mystery, it turns out. You just have to do your homework. You have to put one foot in front of the other, no matter where it takes you. You have to be patient. If you find out something and it’s real, then brother, you have to stick with it, you can’t quit. You have to be stubborn once in a while. And sometimes you just have to be the last person left in the room wondering why.

  The four walls of Joey Marcus’s office on Sunset are plastered with framed, black-and-white celebrity photos, most of them signed in ornate and loving ways to Joey for helping Chad or Ken or Donna or Kate claw their way to the top. There’s a large, unkempt Ficus benjamina protruding out of a pot in the corner, and on his desk a brass statuette of Charlie Chaplin leaning forward, balanced on his cane, ever the hopeful tramp. Otherwise, nothing. It’s a surprisingly modest space he occupies, I think, considering all the stars he’s catapulted into orbit. But then I guess all you really need to know in this town is what number to call and who owes you a favor.

  Joey wears designer jeans and a tailored white shirt with the sleeves turned up at the wrists. He’s a rough, edgy little guy, with a day’s worth of gray stubble on his cheeks. It’s hard to tell whether this is the way he ordinarily looks at work or if he’s just trying it out for the afternoon. Whatever. It’s not like he forgot to shave, I know that much. But the edge is definitely for real. He’s like one of those old flyweights, those hundred pound wunderkinds I used to watch work out down at the Olympic Auditorium. Only Joey uses words, not fists, to jab his way through life. “I know why you’re here” is the first thing that pops out of his mouth. “Fact, I know all about you.”

  “Okay,” I say, and settle into the chair opposite his desk. “I’m all ears. So tell me.”

  “You’re here on account of the rabbi. Am I right? Of course I am. You want to know what I know. It’s true. Everybody wants to know what Joey Marcus knows.”

  “And what could that be?”

  He gives me a sly little wink, and points his finger in my direction. “That Ezra Diamant,” he says, “he was on his way. No question in my mind. He was going places. Absolutely.”

  “What? You were going to put him in the movies?”

  He slaps his palm down on the desk, smiles derisively. “Movies? Are you fucking kidding? Don’t be an idiot. He was no actor. He was the real thing.”

  I lean in. “Excuse me, Mr. Marcus—”

  “Please. Call me Joey. No one calls me Mr. Marcus. That was my father.”

  “Okay, then. Joey. I’m an old man. I’m confused. I grew up here, but I don’t do Hollywood. So just what exactly do you mean, ‘the real thing’?”

  He leans back in the leather swivel chair, weaves his hands together behind his head, closes his eyes for a meditative Zen moment before he takes a deep breath and speaks again. “What do I mean? What. Do. I. Mean. Well, since he’s dead now, it’s kind of water over the dam, you understand? Obviously not gonna happen. But since you asked, I’ll tell you. That rabbi of yours was a star in his own right.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  Something, some rabid enthusiasm is missing in my response. “What—?” he says. “You never went to services there?”

  My head wags from side to side. “I’ve kind of given it up, you know, for Lent.”

  He chuckles. “Lent. Very funny. That’s a good line. You could do stand-up.”

  I look him straight in the eye. “All I’m trying to find out is why he died, Joey. Maybe if you know everything, you can tell me that.”

  “I can’t tell you why he died, boychik. That’s a spiritual question. Or a medical question, and I’m no doctor. All I can tell you is why we were having lunch.”

  “Okay. That would help.”

  He stands up and starts pacing back and forth. “Take a look at these walls,” he says. “What do you see?”

  I crane my neck, glance around. “Movie stars?”

  “No. None of these people are stars. Not really. Well, maybe one or two. But if you want the truth, there haven’t been any big stars since, oh, I dunno, Cary Grant. Rock Hudson. Gina Lollobrigida. That era. These other kids”—he waves his arm dismissively—“what you got here is just the basics. You give them a script, they know enough to read it back. Put a little flair in their voice. Every guy who walks through that door is tall, dark, and handsome. They don’t come any other way. Every girl has nice tits. It doesn’t mean a thing, you know what I’m saying? It’s raw. Straight out of the mine.”

  “And the rabbi?” I ask. “Where does he fit into all this?”

  Joey flings his arms like a windmill when he talks. He’s always in motion. “I saw him once at a Jewish-Muslim peace luncheon. That guy was different. He had some serious fucking ideas. About God. About Israel. And when he opened his mouth he could move a crowd. You put those elements together? That’s powerful energy. I’m telling you, with just a little help from me, he could have started a whole new religion.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “You better believe I’m serious. He was right there, on the launchpad. You remember L. Ron Hubbard?”

  “The one who started Scientology?”

  “Exactly. L. Ron Hubbard. You wanna know what he had in the beginning? I’ll tell you. He had nothing. Absolute bubkes. A few crummy sci-fi books that went nowhere. A bunch of crazy—and just between you and me—stupid ideas. But it didn’t matter. You know why? Because he was a born salesman. He made it all up from scratch—a great big complicated phony university curriculum, with tests and levels, the whole megillah. He made up a whole new entire fucking world. And what’s more, he got folks to buy into it.”

  “And that’s what the rabbi was after? A new religion?”

  “Maybe. I dunno, probably so. We were just in the early phases. We were talking about television the day he died. He was putting his thoughts together for a book. In my humble opinion, it would have been huge.”

  I nod, jot down a little of what he had said in my reporter’s notepad. “So who were the other people at the table? You know them?”

  “There were two guys in suits, they could have been Shir Emet people. They could also just have been banking friends of his. I never heard their names. They both talked about money they could cobble together down the line to get the word out. Not right away, you know, but when the time came.”

  “Big money?”

  “I didn’t hear actual numbers. And they didn’t bring along their checkbooks, if that’s what you mean. But from what they said, and from what they didn’t say, I’ll tell you—it sounded like serious money.”

  “What’d they look like?”

  He scratches his chin. “One was big. He had short red hair. So maybe he wasn’t Jewish. I mean, sure, he coulda been, I’ve known a few redheaded Jews, and not just Woody Allen, but he didn’t strike me that way. The other one was short, skinny, older. Most definitely a landsman.”

  “And the fourth guy at the table?”

  Joey thinks a minute. “The fourth guy. The fourth guy. Oh him, right. He was some starving yeshiva student. Ezra brought him. Or maybe he invited himself to lunch, is what I remember. I think his name was Jeremy something. No, wait, Jonah. That was it. Strange kid. Fidgeted with his food the whole time. Wispy little beard. Looked kinda like Trotsky. A young Trotsky. You ever see that movie, The Assassination of Trotsky? Richard Burton did a helluva job. But this kid?” Joey shrugs with his hands. “He didn’t seem to have all that much to contribute, you ask me. Like I say, maybe he was hungry, nervous, or I dunno, just another lovesick fan of the rabbi’s.”

  “So tell me in your own words, Joey. You were sitting there. The rabbi was talking. He was eating his soup. And then something happened, r
ight? One minute you were eating, and the next minute you watched him die. Now, what did that look like, exactly?”

  He blinks. Shakes his head from side to side. “I was there, sure, but not right when he died.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I was there, but then I got up to go to the john. I was just gone for a few minutes, you know. Five at the most. And when I came back, he was already hunched over like. His head was already flat on the table.”

  “He was dead when you got back?”

  “I’m not a doctor, Mr. Parisman. Let’s just say, between you and me, he didn’t look so good.”

  Omar is waiting for me when the elevator doors open. “Any stray ducks in the lobby?” I ask.

  “Nah,” he says. “It’s quiet. Guess you can relax, boss. Nobody wants to kill you. Not today, anyway.”

  We get into my Honda and start driving back to Shir Emet. I tell him what Joey Marcus had to say, and Omar shakes his head incredulously. “Haven’t we had enough with goddamn religions?” he wants to know. “Why would anyone want to start a new one? Jesus.”

  Several bearded men in black coats and rumpled white shirts are standing around or parading back and forth on the sidewalk outside the synagogue. One is crouched on the stone steps talking on his cell phone. They’re there to collect their boys and walk them home. I tell Omar to wait for me near the car just in case someone gets a crazy idea and wants to leave behind another bullet. “Better yet,” I say, “if anyone goes near that car—”

  “I’ll kill him,” Omar says, matter-of-factly.

  “No, you won’t. That’s not a useful response.”

  “So what, then?”

  “How about you just twist his arm and bring him gently into the rabbi’s office. I’d like to meet him.”

  Omar frowns. “I’ll stay.” He motions toward the small congregation swarming on the sidewalk. “But nobody’s gonna touch that car, not with this mob around.”

  Sophie Applebaum is surprised to see me. She looks up from her computer screen. “Ah, Mr. Detective,” she says. “What can I do for you today?”

  I pull up a chair opposite her desk, not that she invited me. “I’m on a mission,” I begin. “The rabbi was friends with a student.”

  “The rabbi was friends with lots of students,” Sophie says. “It’s like I told you before, he loved his students.”

  “Yeah, well, but this one was special. He took him to lunch.”

  She adjusts her glasses, pushes them higher up on her nose. She’s clearly not impressed with the little bit I have to offer. In fact, I doubt that she’s impressed with me, period. I’m just a nudnik, a pest, to her. And an old nudnik, to boot. We’re the worst kind. “I go out to lunch with many people, Mr. Parisman. Some I like, some I don’t. It’s lunch. Something to put in your mouth. The rabbi was just the same.”

  “Okay, then, let me come at it another way. This isn’t that big a place. You have what—four hundred students here?”

  “Three hundred and eighty-six at the moment. But who counts?”

  “Fine. Three hundred eighty-six. Do you know a student here, a skinny kid, doesn’t talk much, whose first name is Jonah? He’s probably not in the high school. Maybe he’s in the rabbinical program. Twenty years old or so?”

  She nods almost immediately. “Jonah Siegel is the one you’re referring to. A nice boy. A sensitive boy. Very devoted.”

  “That’s him, I bet. Now, for the $64,000 question: Could you put me in touch with him?”

  She takes off her glasses, rubs the lenses with a Kleenex, sets them gently back on her face. This is a form of some strange calisthenics, I think. Glasses on, glasses off. What Orthodox Jews call exercise. “I only wish I could point you down the hall, but the truth is he hasn’t been back here in a while.”

  “Since when?”

  She turns away, it seems like she’s humming a little klezmer tune to herself, peers into her computer screen, and taps a few keys. “We keep pretty good track of our people. Ah, here’s the attendance record.” Now she goes silent for a few seconds. “Actually, he’s been absent since the day Rabbi Ezra, le sholem, passed away. How’s that for irony?” She touches the screen with the tip of her finger. “His teacher even made a note: he called his apartment last week, but no one answered.”

  “So maybe it’d be a mitzvah then if I went over and knocked on his door. I’m an old man, I have nothing better to do. He might be sick in bed. You remember those golden days, when doctors made house calls?”

  She frowns. “What do you want him for?”

  “Well,” I say, “if he’s who I think he is, then he was one of the last people to see that rabbi of yours while he was still breathing. And, I dunno, I find it odd—ironic, as you put it—but the police never talked to him.”

  She sighs and shakes her head, scribbles something down on a pink scratch pad. “I could lose my job over this.” She pushes the paper toward me. “Here’s his address. He won’t know who you are”—she raises an eyebrow—“and you and I never had this conversation. But you could go see him, yeah, sure. It wouldn’t hurt. And maybe he has information; that’s none of my business. But if you see him, do me a favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  Her face softens. “You tell him to stop grieving. Tell him to come back to school. It would be a mitzvah.”

  I fold the paper and stuff it carefully in my shirt pocket. As I’m opening the door she says, “Mr. Parisman. I almost forgot. There’s someone else you could also talk to. I wasn’t going to say anything, but after we spoke the other day, I ran into Ruth Diamant at the supermarket. She wasn’t at the funeral, and I hadn’t seen her in I don’t know how long. She told me to give you her number in case you had any questions. She doesn’t speak for the whole family, of course, but she has a very definite point of view.”

  “Ruth Diamant?”

  “The rabbi’s oldest daughter.” She picks up the framed photo of the brooding teenage girl from the desk. “This one. She’s not grieving. She lives in Echo Park. With another young woman. Ezra had lots of tsuris with her. Years of trouble. It was better for both of them when she finally left the house. You know what I mean? A relief.”

  A second piece of pink paper is ripped from the scratch pad. “Thanks, Sophie,” I say. “I see why the rabbi had such confidence in you.”

  “Get out of here, Mr. Detective. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than to butter up a heartbroken old lady.”

  Chapter 9

  JONAH SIEGEL’S cramped, handwritten name is fixed at eye level in a two-inch metal bracket on his front door. If you twist your neck up and slightly to the right, there’s a small brass mezuzah waiting to be touched. His apartment is on Kingsley near 6th. It’s an older building. Once upon a time, maybe thirty years ago, it was pink; now who can tell? It hasn’t had any tender loving care in a while, that’s for damn sure. The narrow lawn out front is unwatered, and the trio of spindly palm trees planted along the apron could use a good trim. A printed red sign warns that the elevator is on the fritz, and after several flights climbing concrete stairs it’s not just me, even Omar is looking weary. This used to be a major Latino neck of the woods—lots of short, tough, dark-skinned Nicaraguans and Salvadorans walking around in blue jeans and baseball caps, and pretty good food to go along with them, as I remember. Times have changed; the whole neighborhood’s been folded into Koreatown. No more pupusas and empanadas. Bring on the kimchi. It’s all good.

  His doorbell doesn’t work. What else is new? We knock hard—three, four, five times—but there’s no answer. Omar’s got better eyes than I do. He peeks through the cracks in the blinds. “It ain’t empty, man. I can see a ratty old couch. And a TV over in the corner. Big pile of clothes on the floor. The guy’s a slob.”

  “He’s a student, Omar.”

  “Well, his mother didn’t teach him beans about cleaning up after himself.”

  “No, probably not.” I pound on the door again, look around anxiously in
all directions. This time of day, it’s early afternoon, none of the other tenants appear to be home yet from work. I play with the doorknob, reach into my sports coat, and fish out one of the handy-dandy metal tools I’ve kept around all these years, just in case a situation like this ever arose.

  Omar turns the other way, mumbles to me under his breath while I bend down and fool with the lock. Most of the time he keeps it in. He’s silent and cool, the way old jazz legends—guys like Monk and Charlie Parker—are silent and cool. When push comes to shove you can’t rattle him, but once in a while he shifts gears, there’s no explaining it. Something sets him on edge and he starts to act up, like Jiminy Cricket. All of a sudden he’s leaning on my shoulder; he’s my conscience from the barrio. “What do you think you’re gonna find, man? Best case, you bust in there and the kid is dead. That’s the best case. Then what? Then, que bueno, you know you’re onto something, right?”

  “If he’s dead, we’re definitely onto something.”

  “But you know what else? That’s also the worst case. Absolutely the worst case. How’re you gonna explain to the cops what you’re up to?”

  “I have friends in high places, Omar.”

  He chuckles. “They’d have to be pretty fucking high for you to walk away.”

  “You know something? You’re right. Maybe I’ll just blame you for breaking in. They’d buy that, doncha think?”

  “Hey, that’s not funny, man.”

  I give a twist and the door lurches open. “Well then, let’s hope there’s nothing here to explain.”

  We step into the darkened, airless living room and tiptoe around on the shag carpet. After a few seconds, it becomes abundantly clear that Mr. Jonah Siegel isn’t home. Or if he is, he isn’t making much noise. We both heave a collective sigh. Even with the lights flicked on, there’s not very much to recommend this place. Certainly no reason to live here unless you were just passing through. A box with running water, that’s all. “Functional,” I say under my breath.

  “You got that right.” Omar nods gravely.